exhaustrefuse

At this point I should use a different frontend, but given how often YouTube likes to break anything connected to it with its constant changes, I've put it off...

However it's not even the insistence on shorts that's got me writing this. It's their tile/square scaling for videos in general. On my display they're so massive you only see around six to eight videos at default zoom.

Even more annoying is they seem to go back and forth on this, so some days it's like this then it's back to something that lets me see a multitude of videos to choose from without constant scrolling. I understand there are way bigger problems with YouTube than this, but it's bizarre that among all the criticisms I haven't seen this as much.

The content recommendations vary wildly to often being trash, the push of shorts on desktop is bad, and to top it off they seem to want to make the basic browsing experience awful too. Yet they've basically got a near monopoly on user-uploaded videos so I'm stuck venting about them instead of moving to alternatives.

Somebody figure out how to make PeerTube or similar really happen for web's sake.

people will navigate even the most convoluted software when motivated enough

So a lot of this I recognize has more to do with me than others, but wanted to get it out somewhere.

I haven't had much luck in finding any particular community/group that I feel comfortable with. Feels like I'm the downer/buzzkill for not being as enthusiastic or knowledgeable in some contexts, or a shill/fan for not being as negative enough in others.

My interests tend to be pretty broad and never dwelling on much enough for many. I'm not interested in getting hyped up over new stuff, or caught up only in criticizing it either. More often than not I'm trying to thread the needle to appreciate what I can from things and criticize what I can't, backing away and trying to find more stuff to explore.

In the process I end up with various niche pieces of knowledge while being a bit out of tune with some pop culture/entertainment stuff. (i mean how else would i have found myself here)

I dunno where I'm going with this, but sometimes it feels like I'm either walking on eggshells among the passionate or bounced between rocks of an enthusiastic river's rapids when trying to find community. Yet I still can't help occasionally feeling like I should try to find some kinda community out there, and that's probably the most onerous tension of it all.